Copeland Park Residents Group – One Step Closer

On Tuesday night I chaired the second Copeland Park Residents Public Meeting and saw it well on the way to becoming a properly constituted body. With the election of a committee and 2 events already planned for them to work on, as well as great discussions about local aspirations and issues, then it has the right mix of action based activity to move forward and a keen eye on how the area develops.

There was a great turn out at the Community Room in Gloucester South Fire station (more people will recognise the Skillzone which is also part of the building) and we had some business to attend to in terms of getting volunteers to be on the committee to take thing,s forward and there was great appetite to get involved. To that end, a committee was formed and they will be sorting out the roles and getting on with the plans for community events.

The next bit was developing two community action events, the first being a litter pick. This was inspired by the event put on last year by Kingsway Residents Association, and the Copeland Park Group are going to borrow the litter pick from Quedgeley Parish Council. For those who would like to help, it is going to be on the 27th July, at 1330h meeting at the big roundabout in the centre of Copeland Park.

The second event is the need for a speed action group to do some speed checks on the roads of Copeland Park. This was inspired by the work I did in setting up the Kingsway Community Speed Group when similar issues were raised about speeding in Kingsway. This is initially designated for the 18th to 22nd August, so again, if anyone wants to help, then that would be great.

There was also a great round table discussion about people’s experiences and issues, some of which we could help with, and a lot of issues I could take away to do something about. The advantage that Copeland Park has over Kingsway is that we are dealing with one developer, one maintenance company and should be adopted in one package (fairly soon). We also talked about the City Boundary Review and what their aspirations were. There was a strong feeling of abandonment by both the City and Parish Councils, because of the way they are ont he edge of the wards and yet the only access is by Grange, and postal address is Tuffley. Confusing and not helpful. I would hope that future proposals see Copeland Park going into Grange, as that would make a lot of sense.

I’m really looking forward to seeing this new organisation to grow and to seeing how the residents engage with the community group.